Creating Reports Using Explore

Brooks Alford

August 21, 2015 20:59

What is Explore?

Explore is Watershed’s report creation tool. Use Explore to fill your dashboards with reports that help measure the impact of your organization’s learning and training data. It provides a number of report types and filter options that enable you to take a closer look at your data so you can find new insights and correlations you might not have discovered otherwise.

Who can use this feature?

User Types

Any user with access to Explore (Global Admins, Area Admins, and some Users).

Pricing

Available on paid plans (Analyst, CLO, and Enterprise).

Expertise

Anybody (both beginners and experts) can use this feature.

How to Get to Explore

There are three ways to access Explore:

To create a new report, click Explore in the main navigation:

For an existing report, click the gear icon from your Dashboard: In the menu that appears, click Configure or Advanced Configuration:

On the top right corner of an existing report's detail page, click Configure:

Using Explore

There are four main sections in Explore:

Report Previews - One preview shows how your report will look on the Dashboard, while the other shows a live preview of your report's detail view. As you update the report type and report options, both report previews update in real time:

Report Types - Here, you'll choose what type of report you want to create. Use the arrows on either side of the carousel to scroll through every report type:

Report Filters - Once you choose a report type, use the options to customize the data your report analyzes:

Action Menu - After you’re satisfied with your report, save it so you can see it again later or share with others from the Action Menu. Also use it to access Advanced Configuration or leave Explore without changing anything with Cancel:

Report Types

Watershed has many report types to choose from depending on the type of data you have and how you want to present your findings.

Interactions - Watershed is powered by moments of activity called interactions. Sources ranging from mobile apps to learning management systems are connected to Watershed, and as learners perform actions in these programs, data about these actions is sent to Watershed in the form of interactions. The Interactions Report collects and lists each of these actions.

Activity - The Activity Report provides in-depth analysis of an activity such as a course, video, or assessment. Beyond providing insights on how learners perform, this report can perform advanced question analysis to make sure organizations are asking the right questions in their assessments.

Leaderboard - The Leaderboard Report allows you to rank people, activities, or activity types by score, usage, or any custom measure. For instance, use a Leaderboard Report to show a list of your most active users or most viewed pieces of content. This report type is good for exporting tables into a spreadsheet because it shows text-based data.

Heatmap - The Heatmap Report provides an ideal way to quickly compare activity between learners. Like the Leaderboard Report, each Heatmap Report shows text-based data, but also presents a visual representation of your learners’ activities by using varying intensities of color. Darker and lighter backgrounds on cells are used to visually highlight outlier values. For instance, if you are looking at test scores for a group of learners, you can easily identify higher performers because their corresponding colors would be darker.

Bar - The Bar Report displays learner performance with a bar chart. It displays horizontal or vertical bars based on measure values. You can use multiple measures on the same chart or set up a series of charts that measure anything from score to KPI measurements.

Line - The Line Report displays learner performance on a line chart. Choose multiple measures and the Line Report will display values with colored lines. It’s ideal for viewing change in measure values over time.

Scatter - The Scatter Report displays learner performance on a scatter plot. Choose two measures, and Watershed displays individual or group performance of those measures on an X and Y axes. It’s ideal for identifying high and low performers on measures such as KPIs, competencies, or assessment scores.

Spider - The Spider Report displays learner performance in a spider chart. Multiple performance measures (e.g., KPIs, competencies, or assessment scores) are plotted on the same scale. You can quickly compare how different individuals and groups are performing on the selected performance measures.

Range - The Range Report visualizes change between measure values. It’s perfect to view change of performance measures (e.g., KPIs, competencies, or assessment scores) before and after training, and it can also be used to visualize learners’ engagement with video.

Program - The Program Report offers an overview of a pre-defined learning program—like compliance training or new hire training. Watch as your learners progress through courses, videos, assessments and keep up with high-level metrics like average assessment scores and competencies demonstrated. Answer common questions, such as who has or hasn’t completed parts of a learning program and share it with managers and leadership.

Pie - The Pie Report displays learner performance by showing how smaller parts represent proportions of a whole on a pie chart. Use it to track compliance, show what's most popular on your Learning Experience Platform, or see how people answer questions on an assessment.

Correlation - The Correlation Report allows you to explore relationships between multiple performance measures and find dependent relationships. It’s ideal to help show a relationship (or lack of relationship) between scores on sales training and actual sales numbers.

Person - The Person Report allows you to create learner profiles for anyone in your organization. In addition to demographic information, you see a comprehensive overview of each learner’s activity—including information about course registrations, assessment performance, class attendance, and learning programs.

Report Filters

Watershed provides a variety of filters to use when building your reports. Four main filters—Activities, People, Verbs, and Dates— automatically appear on most report types in Watershed. Some report types also allow you to use additional filters, while Admins can add even more filtering options. In each report, only data that meets all of the conditions of your filters will be displayed.

Activities Filter

An activity is anything you want to measure (i.e., an assessment, course, survey, video, etc). The Activities filter lets you choose which activities you want your report to focus on.

In Explore, click Activities to pull up the filter:

Use the search bar to find an activity:

Or, click Pick From a List to choose an activity from the list of every activity you have permission to see:

Click the Activity Type dropdown to filter the activities shown by their activity type. This list is automatically generated from the data associated with the activities you have permission to see:

In Pick from a List, you can also choose all activities of a certain activity type. For instance, this would be useful if you want to create a report that focuses on all of your surveys:

When using Pick from a List, click once to include the activity and click again to exclude the activity:

You can choose to include more than one activity for your report. The data use to create your report will be data from all included activities without any data from excluded activities.

Please note: Exclusion filters work in the same way as inclusion filters in that the diferent filters are applied in addition to one another. This means that if you exclude an activity and a verb, for example, only data about both that activity and verb will be excluded. Data about the activity using a different verb will not be excluded from the report.

If you want to exclude an included activity, hover over the activity and click the circle with the line through it.

If you want to include an excluded activity, hover over the filter and click the checkmark.

If you want to deselect an activity you’ve already chosen, hover over the activity and click the trash can icon next to the activity’s name.

By default on new reports, no activities are chosen. In this case, your report will focus on every activity that you have permission to see.

People Filter

The People filter lets you choose the individuals and groups from your organization that should be included in your report.

Click People in Explore to pull up the filter:

Use the search bar to find people or groups:

Or click the Pick From a List button to see individual people, groups, or group-types that you have permission to see:

Select items from Pick people, Pick groups, and Pick group types:

If you choose a group type, every group as identified in your data that you have permission to see will be included in your report:

When using Pick from a List, click once to include the person, group, or group type and click again to exclude the person, group, or group type:

You can choose to include more than one person, group, or group type in your report. The data use to create your report will be data from all included people without any data from excluded people.

Please note: Exclusion filters work in the same way as inclusion filters in that the diferent filters are applied in addition to one another. This means that if you exclude an activity and a verb, for example, only data about both that activity and verb will be excluded. Data about the activity using a different verb will not be excluded from the report.

If you want to exclude an included person, group, or group type, hover over the activity and click the circle with the line through it.

By default on new reports, no people, groups, or group types are chosen. In this case, your report will focus on every person and group that you have permission to see.

If you want to deselect an person, group, or group type you’ve already chosen, hover and click the trash can icon next to the person’s, group’s, or group type’s name.

Intersecting Groups

By default, when you add multiple groups to your filter Watershed will include everybody who belongs to one or more of those groups. If instead you want to include only people who belong to every group in the filter, tick the Only include people who are in all selected groups option.

This can also be applied to excluded groups.

Groups Output Filter

Sometimes in reports organized by group, you want to compare groups of a particular type, and you also want to filter the report by a group of another type. For example, perhaps you want to compare different job types, but only show data about people in the Sales division. If you were to add both the group type "Job Types", and the group "Sales" to the filter you would see the Sales group listed alongside the various job types in your report. The Groups Output filter provides a way to filter by a group, without that group actually showing in the report.

Because the Output Filter is only relevant for certain report configurations, the settings section is normally hidden, and only appears when it is relevant. Specifically, the section will appear for reports which:

Contain a Group Type filter,

Contain a Group filter, and

Are organized by Group.

Once the Output Filter sectionappears, it will present you with a list of all the groups used to filter the report. You can tick these in order to hide them, or leave them un-ticked to display them in the report.

Verbs Filter

Data is sent to Watershed in the form of individual interactions (i.e., Meredith passed an assessment or John attended a class). The Verbs filter allows you to isolate just the verbs from those interactions and filter reports based on those verbs.

Click Verbs in Explore to pull up the filter:

Use the search bar to find a verb:

Or click the Pick From a List button to choose a verb from the list of every verb you have permission to see:

When using Pick from a List, click once to include the verb and click again to exclude the verb:

You can choose to include more than one verb in your report. The data use to create your report will be data from all included verbs without any data from excluded verbs.

Please note: Exclusion filters work in the same way as inclusion filters in that the diferent filters are applied in addition to one another. This means that if you exclude an activity and a verb, for example, only data about both that activity and verb will be excluded. Data about the activity using a different verb will not be excluded from the report.

If you want to exclude an included verb, hover over the verb and click the circle with the line through it.

If you want to include an excluded verb, hover over the verb and click the checkmark.

By default on new reports, no verbs are chosen. In this case, your report will focus on every verb that you have permission to see.

If you want to deselect an verb you’ve already chosen, have over the verb and click the trash can icon next to the verb’s name.

Extensions Filter

Dates Filter

You’re able to select a time range for your report to analyze.

Click Dates in Explore to pull up the filter:

Use the dropdown to select Trailing or Custom:

Use Trailing to select the previous X days/weeks/months/years from when the report is viewed. While the range stays the same, the dates change to keep up with the present day. If you use a trailing date filter, the report will change every day to only look at the data within the selected range.

Use the Custom option to choose a specific date range that will not change.

To remove a Dates filter, choose All statement dates. If you don’t select any dates, the report will analyze all interactions in the account.

It's also possible to set a dates filter with a start date and no end date. Just select a Custom filter option, choose a start date, and click Clear for the end date. The example below sets a filter starting at January 1, 2018 and will constantly update with new data:

Heads up: the Dates filter looks at the timestamp of the original interaction, not the timestamp when Watershed received the data.

The Time Zone option allows you to control the time zone for your report (the default time zone for reports is UTC):

Card Text

From the Card Text menu, customize the text on the report on both the Dashboard and in the detail view:

The Title is at the top of the report on both the Dashboard and the report’s detail view.

The Summary appears at the footer of the report on the Dashboard.

The Description appears at the top of the report’s detail view under the header.

Quick Filters

Quick Filters allow your users to filter reports without needing to access Explore. These filters, which aren't saved, are perfect for providing limited report control to users not familiar with Watershed.

Advanced Configuration

If you create a report without using Advanced Configuration, you’ll hear us refer to that as Simple Configuration.

Creating Reports

To create a new report, click Explore in the main navigation and use Explore to customize the report. Click Save As New Card to create a new report with the options you’ve chosen:

Only Admins can save reports on shared dashboards. If you’re an Admin, your report will be created on the active dashboard. If you’re not an Admin, your report will be created on your Your Dashboard page.

Click Reset when you’re creating a new report to remove all filters you’ve chosen:

Editing Reports

Click Save changes to this card to update the existing report with the options you’ve chosen:

Click Save as new card to create a new report based on the options you’ve chosen. This will not change the report you first accessed from Explore:

Only Admins can save reports on shared dashboards. If you’re an Admin, your report will be created on the active dashboard. If you’re not an Admin, your report will be created on your Your Dashboard page.